First of all, I want to share a short, informal bibliography, which includes some of the sources that I’ve relied on in preparing these talks, and which can provide some additional reading material for those who are interested:

Christian Faith and Same Sex Attraction, by Fr. Thomas Hopko

Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective, by Fr. John Meyendorff

Marriage and Virginity According to St. John Chrysostom, by Fr. Josiah Trenham

Marriage as a Path to Holiness: Lives of Married Saints, by David and Mary Ford [particularly the introduction]

The Sacred Gift of Life, by Fr. John Breck

There are many more I could mention, and I may mention others later.

Last time I spoke about marriage as an icon. I said that marriage is intended by God to be an image, or icon, of Divine Love. Specifically, it is an image of the loving relationship between Christ and the Church. A man and a woman are united in one, just as Christ, who is called the Bridegroom, and the Church, who is called the Bride of Christ, are united as one. The whole point is that you have two different but complementary entities that are brought together, and the difference or division is overcome by the bond of sacrificial love.

I want to emphasize that calling marriage an icon does not mean that marriage is not something beautiful and good in and of itself. When God created man, He created him in “in His image;” that is, Man is an icon of God. And God said, “it is very good,” after He had created man. So man and woman, and the marriage of man and woman, are things created good by God. But their goodness is definitely connected with, and can’t be separated from, the mystery of God’s love for us, and the mystery of Christ the Bridegroom and the Church as the Bride.

So now I want to speak about marriage as a sacrament. What’s a Sacrament? The word comes from the Latin sacramentum, and could be understood to mean something consecrated, or set apart as holy (though it is often taken to mean, rather, “an oath”). This is a translation of the Greek word, mysterion, or “mystery.” So sometimes we use the word “sacrament,” but we also speak of the sacraments as the “mysteries” of the Church.

St. Paul specifically uses the word “mystery” when he speaks about marriage in Ephesians, chapter 5. This is the passage used for the Epistle reading in the marriage service, and it makes explicit the connection between marriage between a man and woman, and the marriage between Christ and the Church.

A sacrament, or mystery of the Church, uses natural, physical elements, through which God imparts His grace, or uncreated energies, to us. Through the hand of the priest or bishop (which itself takes on a sacramental reality), a concrete, physical act or element becomes a vehicle of God’s grace, for our salvation.

In any sacrament, there is a specific purpose, and a specific way of doing it, and there are specific requirements for those participating. It’s helpful here to compare the Sacrament of Marriage with the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, or Holy Communion. In each case there is a preparation, a consecration, and a consummation.

First comes the preparation. With Baptism, the person being baptized is first made a catechumen. In the case of adults, there is a deliberate, lengthly period of preparing, involving learning the Orthodox faith, and so on. It has to be clear, in the case of an adult, that the person is embracing the faith of the Church; otherwise becoming a member of the Church wouldn’t make sense. In the case of the Eucharist the preparation involves being baptized, being chrismated, making confession as needed, praying and fasting, in addition to continuing to embrace the faith.

The preparation in each case also involves having the necessary elements on hand. For Baptism, most importantly, you have to have some water. For the Eucharist, you need to have some bread and wine. We don’t mess with these elements, and decide sometimes to have the Liturgy with just bread and no wine, or to substitute other things.

Then, each Sacrament has a consecration. In the Baptismal service, the priest asks God to sanctify the water through the descent of the Holy Spirit, making it a “fountain of incorruption,” a “gift of sanctification,” a “loosing of sins,” and so on. In the case of the Eucharist, the priest prays, in St. John Chrystostom’s liturgy, that God would send down the Holy Spirit and make the bread “the precious Body of thy Christ,” and the wine “the precious Blood of thy Christ.”

Finally, there is a consummation in each case. With baptism, the person is immersed in the waters, and so he is initiated into the life of the Church. With the Eucharist, the person partakes of the Lord’s precious Body and Blood, and experiences communion with God and the Church. After the preparation, and following the consecration, the consummation, or partaking of the mystery, becomes possible and appropriate.

Likewise, in marriage there is preparation. At a minimum, in Orthodox practice, that means having a man and a woman of appropriate age, who are not prevented from marrying by being related or being married to anyone else, or for any other reason. Ideally they would meet with the priest over a period of time so that he could be in good conscience about how they are approaching their marriage. The elements of the marriage are in fact the man and the woman; other things are used in the service (such as the rings and crowns) but what is most essential is the man and the woman, just as the essential elements in the Eucharist are the bread and the wine.

The consecration takes place during the marriage service. The prayer just prior the crowning calls the Lord the “Priest of mystical and pure marriage, and the Ordainer of the law of the marriage of the body.” Then the priest prays that God would send down heavenly grace upon the groom and the bride, just like he prays for the grace of God to come down in the other sacraments. Then he asks God to “crown them with glory and honor.”

What is sometimes surprising to people about the Orthodox wedding service is that there is no “I do.” Most understandings of marriage outside of Orthodoxy view it as a contract. The man and the woman are establishing a legally binding contract; by saying “I do,” they consent to the contract. But this is not the Orthodox understanding of marriage at all. Rather than being a legal contract, it is a gift of grace given by God for the working out of their salvation. It is a mystery that is bestowed upon them, and which they enter into together. The priest is assuming that they are coming by mutual consent; that’s a given. But what is essential in the service is the consecration that takes place, by God, through the hand of the priest. We could even speak of the marriage as a kind of ordination, in which the married couple are “ordained” to live the married life.

Finally, after the consecration of the marriage, then it becomes appropriate for the bride and the groom to consummate the marriage through their physical union.

While we do not speak of marriage as a legal contract, we could speak of it as a covenant [Fr. John Breck especially emphasizes this understanding of marriage in The Sacred Gift of Life]. All the sacraments have a covenant aspect. We make a covenant with God when we accept baptism and participate in the life of the Church. We are promising to do our best to be faithful, and when we fail, we know that need to ask for forgiveness.

Likewise, marriage as a sacrament has the aspect of a covenant before God. It’s implicit in the marriage service that the couple is agreeing to the covenant, and now God is sealing that covenant. Covenant means much more than a license, or a right, or a legal contract. It means total commitment and responsibility before God and before the spouse. The sexual union within marriage is something that takes place under that covenant. That’s why acts that take place outside of the marriage bond, whether before or during the marriage, are violations of that covenant.

Connected with the notion of covenant is the understanding of a chaste union in marriage. The marriage service includes prayers that God would grant the couple chastity. “Marriage is honorable among all, and the marriage bed undefiled,” it says in Hebrews 13:4. When husband and wife are faithful to each other, and when they exercise their gift of sexuality in a moderate and loving way, each putting the other first, and keeping in mind the purpose of their marriage, they are behaving chastely, according to the Church. Referring to the Gospel reading in the marriage service, St. John Chrysostom puts it like this: “If you so desire, He will work for you an even greater miracle than He worked in Cana: that is, He will transform the water of your unstable passions into the wine of spiritual unity.” This is the potential in a Christian marriage.

The crowns that are placed on the heads of the bride and groom refer to their calling to be the King and Queen of their home, ruling it wisely. The crowns also refer to the calling of the husband and wife to be martyrs. They have been joined together in Christ; they are united together with Christ. Their marriage is to be an icon of the union of Christ with the Church. Keeping this in mind and struggling to be that icon is what makes their marriage a martyrdom. Literally, martyrdom means “witness.” They bear witness to the love of Christ in their relationship. When they fall short and need to seek forgiveness, that is also a kind of bearing witness to the love and forgiveness of Christ.

In this martyric struggle, the husband and wife work out their salvation together. They travel on the path to salvation together, as we say. They take up their cross and follow Christ together. Christian marriage is the way of the cross. Like the cross, it’s not at all easy, but it is incredibly good. It is necessarily sacrificial. Christ’s sacrifice makes marriage and all sacraments possible. But in marriage, the spouses are also called to sacrifice.

By thy way, there’s no suggestion in all this that the main requirement for marriage is that the man and the woman be in love with each other. As a priest, I’m much less interested in whether the couple are in love. I’m much more interested in whether they are willing to love each other. That is, they must be willing to work at sacrificially loving each other day in and day out for the rest of their lives.

As I mentioned last time, children very much fit into our understanding of marriage. The husband and wife are also ordained to be father and mother of a family. The couple begins to work out their salvation together, and any children they may be granted by God then also contribute to the martyric struggle and working out of their salvation.

So in light of all this, it should be clear that marriage as it is practiced in the Church is not something that the state has anything to do with. The government can no more tell us now to practice marriage than it can tell us how to practice the Eucharist or Baptism or any other sacrament. That’s none of the state’s business.

It may be that we will have to change our current policy when it comes to linking our sacrament of marriage with civil marriage. Currently our Archdiocese requires that a couple apply for a civil wedding license prior to participating in the sacrament of marriage. The priest actually signs the license. We may end up saying we’re just not going to do that anymore, and it’s up to a couple to have the civil ceremony done separately from the church sacrament. I think it’s very likely that we’ll have to do something like that.

But as far as our understanding of marriage goes, it remains what it has always been and always will be in the Orthodox tradition. It is not a legal contract between two people, but a Mystery of the Church that functions both as an icon of the union between Christ and the Church, and as a means of salvation for husband and wife, and any children they may bear. It is not a right, just as none of the sacraments are rights; rather it is a gift that must be received “with the fear of God and faith and love.” It is not primarily for the pleasure or self-fulfillment of the spouses; that is, it is not for any selfish end; rather it is for mutual self-sacrifice. It is a school for learning the way of the Cross, which is the way of genuine, life-giving love rather than destructive self-love.